


Liegeman

by l_cloudy



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Confessions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jealousy, Loyalty, Mentions of Aimeric/Jord, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-10 13:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13502242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: The shadows were long, in Fortaine.Laurent, Jord, and the ghost of Aimeric between them.





	Liegeman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lileura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lileura/gifts).



> Dear Lileura, happy Chocolate Box! You had the most amazing prompts, I feel #blessed.

When Jord was reunited with the Prince in Fortaine – after Charcy, after Damianos, after everything – he found him remarkably self-composed, given their situation. He had a fat split lip and a bruised jaw, which somehow did nothing to detract from his looks, and his right arm was in a sling. He looked Jord down coolly, and told him to report to Enguerran, and not to fuck it up this time.

There was very little sentiment. No pleasantries were exchanged, but not insults either, an improvement over the last time they had been in a room together. Before departing Ravenel the Prince had made sure Jord be given the note, the last thing Aimeric had touched, and he had carried it in his pocket since. Jord still didn’t know whether it had been meant as a kindness or a cruel twist of the blade.

Jord knew this: it wasn’t over.

He settled back into the chain of command, as any good soldier would. Enguerran was a capable commander, mindful of Jord’s leadership experience and his relationship with the rest of the men. He expected Jord to obey his orders, but made sure to take Jord’s opinion under consideration and often included him in meetings. The Prince watched all of this, and very deliberately addressed Enguerran over Jord whenever he could. Every word he spoke to Jord was perfectly, icily civil.

Most of the men were camped outside the fort, others quartered in the barracks, and every day they held drills on the wide fields between the expanse of Akielon and Veretian tents. The nobility, the officers, and some of the Prince’s men were staying in Fortaine.

On the second day the Prince took Jord and Huet with him and showed them to a secluded training yard, giving strict orders to stop anyone from walking in. The excess in secrecy struck him as odd: for all that the Prince had always been private, this wasn’t training. He did nothing that day besides riding in circles, far too fast for the small confines of the stone court.

They went back to the yard the evening after, and the Prince had them construct twin circular targets atop two wooden tripods. He launched himself into a full gallop, running tight circles in a burst of kinetic energy that had Jord stare with slack-mouthed awe. Next to him, Huet stared also.

They stared even more after he began throwing lances, thin and sleek – too slender to be a true cavalry weapon, but too heavy to be used by an unarmoured hunter. They looked almost like Akielon weapons; the Prince threw them, methodically, and proceeded to thoroughly wrench his bandaged shoulder over the rest of the evening. Later, Paschal would chide him for it. He would fuss over the stitching, put some ointments over the wound, and the next day the Prince would be at it all over again. Jord was familiar with this sort of obsessive mood, and felt ill at ease.

Summer daylight gave way to orange sunset. In the morning they would once again let the skirt-wearing Akielon warriors into the fort, as if they were friends. Today, Damianos had spent the better part of two hours alternating between staring hopelessly at the Prince, and fiddling with the pin at his shoulder when he caught himself.

Perhaps Damianos was the reason for this, all the vibrating spears thrown with far too much strength by shaking arms. The Prince was encased within the strict confines of his jacket, unlaced at the neck and of a familiar shade of dark blue. An uniform, just as much as the one Jord himself wore. The uniform he wore still, no matter what.

By the time they left the practice yard, it was twilight. The shadows were long in Fortaine; Jord had known this long before setting his sight on the fort, from Aimeric. The sea was to the west, horizons unbroken, and the skies turned spectacular when the sun sank into the waters. Sometimes Jord caught himself thinking – if they had come here together, he would have made Aimeric look at his home with new eyes.

The meetings continued, day after day, and the Akielon generals were being unreasonable. The Prince’s mood progressively worsened, and Jord steadied himself. Something was bound to happen, any day now.

Then came one morning when Damianos’s staring was even less subtle than usual. There were unsatisfactory dispatches, an array of minor problems with the armies, and that blaring Makedon left in a huff when the hall would not have it his way. They adjourned. Soon enough the two of them were the last one left in the room. The Prince raised his head from where he’d been discretely massaging his temples, and pinned Jord with a look like burning blue coals.

“Jord,” said the Prince. “We haven’t talked in a while.” That would have been since Hellay, unless one counted the parapets of Ravenel. If exchanging insults could count as talking. “Enguerran tells me you’re doing a good job. Tell me, do you like your lodgings?”

He spoke casually, as though the thought had only just occurred to him. Jord’s heart sank low into his stomach. He said, “Fine, Your Highness.”

He wasn’t being housed in the barracks. They’d given him a stone room in the visitor’s quarters, inside the fort. His mattress was soft; Jord hated it. His hand kept going to his pocket, where the wrinkled piece of paper was kept.

“Are you sure?” The Prince asked. “If you don’t like them, I’m sure we could arrange for something else. Aimeric’s rooms, perhaps.”

“After all, had Aimeric got his way you probably would have been sleeping there, anyway. Of course if he’d got his way I would have been executed,” he went on, rather pleasantly. “You’d have been left to see to the sleeping arrangements yourself. Perhaps Guion would have approved of you.”

If Jord stood still, if he kept quiet, that would keep the Prince going longer. He had a tendency to get worked up in his anger. The safest thing to do would be to beg him to stop; he wouldn’t, not immediately, but he would begin to lose momentum. Hearing the Prince talk about Aimeric like that – like a pest he was glad to be rid of – sparked a burst of anger in his chest. But if Aimeric didn’t deserve these words, Jord certainly did. Aimeric hadn’t trusted Jord enough to come to him, and he’d failed his Prince and the men under his command, a traitor twice over. The pain was like sharp cuts, a jagged piece of glass breaking the skin over and over. He welcomed all of it.

“What am I saying, of course Guion wouldn’t have welcomed you. He is an arrogant windbag. He wouldn’t even have let you sit at the table.” The Prince, implacable, was pulling the words straight from the darkest recesses of Jord’s mind. “But you knew Aimeric, he liked to be contrary. Perhaps he would have sneaked you in regardless. Like he used to sneak behind the lines, when you covered for him.”

“And then you could have slept in Aimeric’s bed,” he said, and Jord knew something horrible was coming. The Prince’s face was expressionless, “Where he touched himself at night, thinking of my uncle.”

That had him reeling. Jord took a step back, staggering, steadying himself against the wall as it from a physical hit. He’d had longer to reconcile himself with Aimeric’s confession than he had with his death, and yet the latter was easier to come to terms with. It had been heartbreaking, to hear a victim of such vices to look back on it, and call it love.

“That was uncalled for.” Jord’s failings and Aimeric’s past were two different things. Aimeric’s past belonged to him, and the dead could not speak for themselves.

“I’m sure it was,” said the Prince, effortless as always. He frowned slightly. “But so was what Aimeric did, fucking my Captain over to his side. Wouldn’t you say?”

Somehow, under the indolent demeanour, through the anger and the hurt still cluttering his mind, Jord’s attention fixated on those last words.

“He didn’t.” It was important, suddenly, that he make this clear.

“I’m quite sure,” said the Prince. “That he did. You weren’t exactly discreet about it.”

“He didn’t. Not – ‘to his side’,” Jord said. “You know that – I am your man.”

It was perhaps the first time in his life that Jord saw his Prince at a loss for words. He looked away from Jord and down to his hands, laid flat on the table, fingers splayed on a map between Delfeur and the Akielon province of Sicyon. From his impenetrable eyes to the curt tongue, the Prince made it easy to forget that he was, under all of it, a man of flesh and blood. A young man, not yet of age, as Jord should know. He’d watched him grow up.

“This is reassuring,” said the Prince. The tone was studiedly blank, but there was an odd softness around his mouth and for a moment he truly did look reassured, as if taking comfort in some newfound knowledge. It was an image that was completely at odds with everything Jord knew about him; it reminded Jord, surprisingly, of Aimeric. Jord had always thought of Aimeric as a boy and of Laurent as a man, if a statue could be said to have humanity. Now, he wondered if perhaps they had both been too young.

All of this came to him in the space of a breath. The Prince was still speaking, brisk manner restored. “I was becoming concerned you might have forgotten your oath,” he said. Earlier, Jord might have flushed in embarrassment. Now, he thought he might understand.

“I haven’t,” he said. “Your Highness. I wouldn’t.”

There was a pause. The ceilings in Fortaine were tall, the windows large to best enjoy those spectacular sunsets, and yet now it felt as though there weren’t enough air in the room.

Then the Prince said, “Well, I’m glad we’ve established that.” The way he always spoke turned his words into light mockery, as though he couldn’t care less, but the substance of it said something entirely different. And then, turning his eyes to the window and the sea beyond. _“Jord_?”

“Your Highness?”

“You might want to speak to the lady Loyse,” said the Prince, sounding careful instead of carefully calculated. “While she’s not around her husband. You might find it,” he paused. “A comfort.”

And then he stood up, abruptly, with a loud screech of hard oak dragged against stone floor. It was very effective.

“I’m going out to the camp,” he said. “To tell the men not to hit the Akielons back, even if they hit first, because they are hopeless savages who cannot help themselves.” And then he said, “You’re coming with me.”

And then he left, and Jord followed. As he always did.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://liesmyth.tumblr.com).


End file.
